Assessment of the Diagnostic Effectiveness of Terahertz Radiation in Oral Soft Tissue Lesions

There have been numerous techniques for the examination of biological samples for biological applications and medical fields. Similarly, in dentistry, these technologies are popular and used to understand the structure of the interior mouth comprising of the teeth/bone and surrounding tissue. Even though there is an abundance of various techniques, it is still a challenge to detect diseased tissue especially in its early stage of development. In addition, most of these methods typically rely on either destructive sample preparation [1] or the use of ionizing radiation [2] . For these reasons, there is a need to develop methods which can easily penetrate and discern differences between soft tissues around other dense biological media in and around the mouth. Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy is a nonionizing and nondestructive method since THz waves lie in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared optical bands. THz spectroscopy benefits from the fact that the low photon energy of this radiation does not cause any harm to biological tissues when given in moderate quantities [3] . An important constraint encountered in THz spectroscopy is the limitation of penetration depth into oral tissues due to the high attenuation of THz frequencies in water shown in the figure below. This limitation can be overcome by utilizing ATR THz spectroscopy system.